King Lear :: William Shakespeare Literature Essays

mogul Lear,Abbey exhibited King Lear, another of his large, dramatic jut outs, at the olympian Academy in 1898 the painting was accompanied in the catalog by these lines from Act I, scene i Ye jewels of our father, with washed eyesCordelia leaves you. I write out what you areAnd, like a sister, am most loth to bellowYour faults as they are named. Love well our father.To your professed bosoms I commit him. however yet, alas stood I within his grace,I would prefer him to a conk out place.So farewell to you both.The critics saw much to like in Abbeys King Lear. The reader for The Art Journal (1898, p. 176) comments especially on the bold design of color and the grouping of the figures on the canvas If the admirers of Mr. Abbey felt that the note of the marvelously dramatic Richard III. was not repeated with similar force in stick up years Hamlet and Ophelia, all doubts should be set at rest by the hazardous majesty of the Scene from Lear, a subject which, under the title of C ordelias Portion, stimulate Madox Brown to the production of one of his finest compositions. The dominant figure in Mr. Abbeys arbitrary decoration is Cordelia, and it is impossible to resist the colour-charm in which she is invested. Her yellow-green vestment with the deep blueweed border set against the green robe of France, and opposed to the menacing reds and blacks of Goneril and Regan, is a triumph of originality. As in Richard III. there is a strong steer motion, and the drooping figure of Lear sustained by his pages and followed by his men-at-arms from the left to mighty of the canvas gives this note. The dramatic figure of the sisters in the attitudes of dignified indifference and taunt courtesy are splendidly realized, and the foot-light effect discernible throughout the picture certainly adds to the intenseness of the composition. Unmistakably in this important group, Mr. Abbey has reached a very high gear level and is going far to prove, by this magnificent series of inclination lessons, that his decorative style is capable of giving the fullest expression of dramatic motives. H. S., the reviewer for The Spectator (May 14, 1898, p. 694), also remarks on the audacity of the colour and judges the effect gorgeous and beautiful. The truth of the gestures, he adds, are as finely conceived as are the combinations of scarlet and purple black crimson and sea-green.